Baby Steps to Recovery

It can take years for the body and mind to recover from a traumatic brain injury, and in most cases, patients never regain full control.  But physicians are finding that breakthroughs in hyperbaric oxygen therapy are helping more TBI victims bring their lives back to normal.  This type of treatment is helping one Rapid City man take small steps toward rebuilding his life.

A year ago, he was just a face in the crowd of students at the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology.  A senior studying civil engineering ready to graduate in December.  A father, a fiance.  Shaun Herrod led a normal life. “I was just an ordinary guy,” Herrod said. Until, in an instant, the snapshots in Herrod’s family photo album changed.  “Nothing’s the same, since May.  Everything changed. Our daily routine, our whole life,” fiancee Agnes Steele said. Herrod and his son, then four-year-old Keenan, were driving last May when an SUV came barrelling toward them.  Police believe the driver was doing around fifty-miles per hour in a fifteen mile an hour zone.  That SUV was quickly in Herrod’s lane, and soon, smashed into the driver’s side. The driver had blacked out after huffing Dust-off. Herrod was knocked into a coma, leaving fiancee Steele to wait and wonder about their future together and whether the love of her life would ever walk or talk again. “They really had no idea. They really couldn’t tell me anything about that.  When he slipped into his coma, they told me all I could do was wait.  They couldn’t say when he’d wake up, if he’d wake up, or what kind of condition he’d be in if he did wake up,” Steele said. Not only did he wake up, but he’s beating the odds; teaching himself how to talk, eat and even take steps less than a year from the accident. “That’s the funny thing: I have to learn to walk again. Like a baby,” Herrod said. Each baby step is the result of hours of pain-staking work.

In addition to multiple occupational therapy sessions each week, Herrod is using Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy, a technique Therapist Brett Szymonski says is being used on more traumatic brain injury patients as they return home from the Global War on Terror.  “The hyperbarics, it’s just a process of putting a person in a chamber that’s under pressure and that forces oxygen into the cells of the body, which promotes the healing process,” Szymonski said. A process that’s showing progress for Steele every week.  “The hyperbarics have been tremendously helpful in him becoming more independent. I did practically everything for him, I still do most of it, but he does a lot more by himself than he used to,” Steele said. And even if it doesn’t always come easily, Herrod says he’s thankful to have the chance to struggle through his recovery. “If I give up, there’s no use to go on,” Herrod said. “We’re not gonna think negative, and that’s what I always kept telling him, ‘We’re going to keep positive. You’re going to get through this. We’re going to go home and get our lives back to normal. You’re going to go back to school.’  That’s all I can really do and keep his humor up,” Steele said. By this fall, Herrod hopes to once again be just a face in the crowd of students at his old campus.

Karla Ramaekers: “Do you want to walk across the stage to get your diploma on graduation day?”
Herrod: “Yes, yes, very much.”
Karla Ramaekers asks, “Think you can do it?”
Herrod: “Yes. It’s taking time. I understand that it will take time.”

Time well spent to rebuild a life put on hold. Maconnell Baker, the person who was responsible for Herrod’s accident, was sentenced in December for vehicular battery. He was given a 10-year suspended prison sentence, six months in jail, 300 hours of community service and ordered to pay restitution.